Apparatus for filling open ended containers with free flowing powdered or granular materials is well known. The powdered or granular materials include a broad range of food products, including milk products, condiments, tea, sugar, salt, cocoa, rice, seeds, chopped vegetables as well as chemicals including cleansers, detergents, insecticides, lyes, crystals and the like. An apparatus of this general type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,659 issued to John R. Nalback Engineering Co., Inc. and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,662 issued to John R. Nalbach Engineering Co. Inc. Apparatus of this type has found wide acceptance in the food industry, chemical industry, and cosmetic industry for packing all manner of divided material in powdered or granular form.
Older devices of this general type employ starwheels in the operation of the apparatus. These starwheels operate in a satisfactory manner for one particular size container. If a different size container is desired to be used, a filler disc which meets with the starwheel must be changed in order to fill cans having a different size or volume. When this filler disc is changed a smaller size container can be accommodated in the machine. However the center-to-center distances between each of the filling apertures in the filler discs remain the same, thus necessitating that the same number of cans be fed through the machine regardless of can size. This renders the machine inefficient for use over a wide variety of ranges of container sizes since it is desired that the machine fill an optimum number of cans regardless of can size for each unit of time for which the machine is operating.
It is desirable to have a machine which would provide optimum filling rates for a variety of dissimilar container sizes. The machine would thus eliminate the need for starwheels and provide for easy cleaning.